Marker Genes As Tools To Study Deliberately Released Soil Bacteria

Biosafety and the Environmental Uses of Micro-Organisms

“…Populations could be stabilised in the presence of lucerne in soil, but they were also maintained at a small, but rather stable, size independent of lucerne (Selbitschka et al, 2006) over several years. There were no indications that the inoculation affected the overall abundance and diversity of the dominant indigenous soil microbial community or the microbiological soil functions (Schwieger and Tebbe, 2000;Tebbe and Miethling-Graff, 2006). In environments with low resilience microbial communities, the presence of a GMM may already cause a structural or functional shift, even at lower population sizes, but in highly robust communities, huge amounts of GMMs would have no effect if they fail to occupy a niche within such systems, as demonstrated with the above-mentioned field release.…”